Benjamin C. Kinney – still pruning…

The September/October 2023 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact arrived in my mailbox yesterday, with a copy of my science fiction short story “Driftwood!” You can buy the issue online, or subscribe in digital or print editions.¹

Val is a drone operator on a commercial mining-colony expedition, in orbit over the world they plan to make into their home and their living. The very last thing she wants to find is vague, ambiguous, chemical evidence of extraterrestrial biology.

The drone’s telemetry scrolled up the side of my windowscreen, number after number building toward an answer, overlaid on the live view of Driftwood’s longest mountain range. One set of numbers blinked yellow, alongside an unfamiliar symbol. I paused the scroll. At the screen’s edge, my husband’s videocall continued in thumbnail, volume down low. I expanded the image to a size I could see. “I gotta run. Something’s going on with a geo drone.”

This is the same issue where I have a Biolog writeup as the Featured Author. And even more importantly, Driftwood comes with its own illustration! I love Eli Bischoff‘s choice of illustration and how he executed it.

Check below the fold for a high-res view of the art, and some spoilery details on the story’s scientific inspiration.

 

 

 

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First, the Eli Bischoff’s illustration in all its full-resolution glory:

I knew Driftwood was going to have an illustration, but until I opened up my Analog delivery I didn’t know what the art might be – and when I saw this, I thought “hah, PERFECT.” One of the story’s most important images is a piece of in-story artwork, and I’m delighted to see a real artist’s vision of it!

This story came into existence when an astrobiologist friend was visiting us, and I asked him, “What’s the most interesting thing you’ve read lately?” He pointed me right toward this: the concept of the Molecular Assembly Index. Even if the life is totally foreign, there are ways to assess the likelihood of a molecule coming from life vs. non-life.

I do think this story is as realistic a “first contact” scenario as we’re likely to get. Molecules and hints, their true nature obscure. And people at the point of contact who have a very different set of incentives. Here’s hoping they find a solution that is feasible, genuine, and preserves the universe’s wonder!

My science fiction short story “The Things You Can Maintain Yourself” is free online for all to read today in issue 159 (August 2023) of Lightspeed Magazine! I’ve wanted to publish in Lightspeed for my whole writing career, so I’m excited to appear on their table of contents alongside so many other excellent stories.

“The Things You Can Maintain Yourself” is a flash-length story about car repair, individualism, and a post-post-climate-change world (in a good way). The self-reliant call of the open road is fundamental to the American mythos, but some things you can maintain yourself, and other things take a community.

Jill wiped xylem from her gloves and closed her car’s leafy hood. She’d kept Snapdragon on the road for almost twenty years, and if the world would leave her alone, she could keep him alive for five more, easy.

It wouldn’t, and she couldn’t. No amount of repairs today would spare Snapdragon from the weeding, or her from the pain of uprooting a thing she loved.

You can read my story for free online, or buy the issue 159 as an ebook for $3.99 from the publisher, BN.com, Amazon, Kobo, or Weightless Books; or get an annual subscription to Lightspeed – with twelve months of story-packed issues like this one – for $35.88

More notes (with spoilers) below the fold.

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I first wrote this story in a 2021, to a writing challenge based around images. This is the image that called to me, and became the seed of TTYCMY:

This art appealed to me for two reasons: the burst of plants and flowers out of a drab outfit and concrete wall, and the hammer in the figure’s hands. It looks to me like, in the art, the person is freeing themselves, knocking a hole in the wall to free their vibrant spirit. For this story, I interpreted the two parts separately: a bloom of overflowing life, and the burden of a dripping hammer.

Destruction is often a part of life, but that doesn’t make the price feel any less.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s June 15, which means time for you all to read my latest science fiction short story: “Here at the Freezing End” it out in the latest issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact! You can buy the issue online, or subscribe in digital or print editions.¹

This is a short little piece about a stranded expedition, about surviving – and dying – on a frozen world cut off from all hope of supply. On knowing who you can help, and who you can’t, and how to do a job when it’s as futile as it is important.

This story is inspired by the many years I spent as a member of the National Ski Patrol. In my younger days I served at a busy Vermont alpine ski resort, where we provided first aid and transport to the injured every day, and trained ourselves for the mass casualty events that we hoped we’d never see. (And thankfully, at least in my case, never did.) Later in my life, I served for a year on a backcountry ski patrol in Oregon, where injuries were rare, but would require hours of hauling toboggans along trails in cross-country skies or snowshoes.

Both of those experiences inform this story. Triage, and search & rescue. Cold snow and the savage sweaty heat of exertion.

May none of us be so doomed as the protagonists of “Here at the Freezing End.” But if life feels that way sometimes, may we find as much purpose as they do.